Category Archives: United Nations

At the very best, President Obama is out of touch when it comes to the threat posed by the Islamic State. From the time he called them the “JV” to his comments a few months ago when he admitted that he still had not developed a strategy to confront them, President Obama has, for one reason or another, neglected the threat from the Islamic State.

As is often the case, the president’s neglect has influenced those serving underneath him as they take cues from the “commander’s intent.” So, what we now have is a brewing scandal in which an unprecedented number of Pentagon intelligence analysts have decided to blow the whistle on what they see as Obama administration political appointees watering down their analyses to make it seem that the threat from the Islamic State is not as serious as it actually is.

Multiple investigations have been launched into allegations that senior officials altered intelligence estimates about the Islamic State to indicate a more favorable impression of progress:

In addition to the Pentagon inspector general’s investigation into allegations by dozens of intelligence analysts, other inspectors general inside the intelligence community and two oversight committees in Congress have begun their own probes, according to senior lawmakers and intelligence officials. The Congressional investigations will expand the scope of the existing inquiry by examining allegations of intelligence tampering that predate the war against the Islamic State, some dating back years.

The roots of the intelligence scandal go back to July when the New York Times reported that the Pentagon’s inspector general had launched an investigation into allegations that intelligence products had been distorted by CentCom’s top intelligence officer. The Daily Beast earlier this month reported that 50 CentCom analysts backed up the allegations in the initial complaint, an almost unprecedented revolt inside military intelligence.

U.S. intelligence officials tell us the objections began when an analyst in charge of Iraq intelligence at CentCom for more than 13 years complained through intelligence community whistleblower processes that the assessments produced by his unit were being rejected or distorted before they reached decision makers.

Top officials like Secretary of State John Kerry have used isolated statistics to show progress, but those figures often do not stand up to scrutiny. Ret. Gen. John Allen, who will resign this fall as the president’s envoy to the collation against the Islamic State, used to say that half of the group’s leaders in Iraq had been killed. That was an exaggeration.

Interestingly, while the Obama administration has sought to downplay the threat from the Islamic State and exaggerate the effectiveness of the pinprick US-led air campaign, other world leaders are sounding the alarm, painting quite a different picture of the threat than the rosy scenario that Barack Obama and John Kerry would have us believe.

This week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India called the Islamic State among the “greatest challenges facing the international community.” Modi met with King Abdullah of Jordan, a leader who has taken a particularly strong stand against the Islamic State, to the point he was personally flying sorties against Islamic State forces.

Czech President Miloš Zema will be in New York this week where he will be continuing to “call for a joint struggle against Islamic State, now dominating a large part of Iraq and Syria during his speech in the United Nations.”

Zema is expected to call for the creation of an anti-terrorist unit under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council and for the cooperation of the international community in the struggle against Islamic terrorism.

We’re not crazy about his call for a UN-led anti-terrorism unit under the Security Council due to the UN’s atrocious track record of putting barbarians, savages and despots in charge of things like human rights, but we do agree that there needs to be a greater cooperation between world powers in the West to destroy the Islamic State.

That might mean cooperating closely with Russia and Putin in their campaign against the Islamic State, which is commencing largely because Obama has been so inept in attacking the Islamic State…

If Putin is successful in leading a coalition absent the US in “crushing” the Islamic State, it will have certainly fulfilled one of President Obama’s goals of cutting American influence in the world down to size. That will be a terrible legacy for the next and future presidents to live down.

According to the Lebanese news website, the Beirut Observer, the Jihadist terrorist organization Hezbollah is planning to attack Western targets. The site based its report on information obtained by a “Western intelligence agency” that intercepted message traffic to that effect.

The Observer reported that unnamed Western intelligence officials think that Hezbollah plans to attack Western targets, based on unusual movement of suspected Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards operatives.

The article claimed that the goal of the attack would be to distract global public opinion from indictments expected to be handed down by a special UN tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Rafik Hariri

It has been widely speculated that the UN tribunal will accuse Hezbollah members of involvement in the huge bomb attack on Hariri’s motorcade.

According to the Israeli news site Haaretz, earlier this week Israel’s counter terrorism bureau issued a warning that terrorists intended to carry out attacks against Israelis and Jewish targets abroad, specifying India, Thailand, Greece and Turkey as areas where an attack could take place. It is not known if the Israeli bulletin is related to the report on Hezbollah from the Beirut Observer.

Al Qaeda is known to be active in Turkey, where anti-Israeli sentiment has been on the rise for some time as Islamists expand and consolidate their political power. In addition to Hezbollah, Al Qaeda or other Turkish Jihadist groups could be motivated to attack Israeli or Jewish targets in Turkey.

Of course, India has been inflicted with a virtual menagerie of Jihadist terrorist groups, both domestic and from neighboring Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba pulled off the spectacular Mumbai attacks targeting Jewish targets, but it is far from the only group operating in India, any of which could be prompted to attack Israeli or Jewish targets in India, either of their own volition or in the service of allied organizations.

Thailand has been wracked by a Jihadist insurgency for years in its southern regions. The Thai Jihadists are somewhat of an enigma and their ties to other Jihadist groups are unclear, but Thailand is an enormously popular tourist destination for Israeli and European tourists.

There is known to be Al Qaeda activity in Greece and Al Qaeda operatives have been apprehended there.

What all this adds up to is we could be talking about one threat or two distinct threats, one reported by the Beirut Observer from Hezbollah and another from Israeli authorities from unnamed terrorists in the four nations mentioned.

The possibility of Hezbollah launching attacks against the West in either Europe or the US has long been a deep concern for national security and counterterrorism practitioners. Hezbollah has been in existence for a decade longer than Al Qaeda and has been amply funded and equipped by Iran. Hezbollah is a much larger organization than Al Qaeda and is known to have cells, operatives and sympathizers spread throughout the world, including Asia, Europe and North and South America. Hezbollah has been referred to as the “A” team of Jihadist terrorism and Al Qaeda the “B” team. In fact Hezbollah trained Al Qaeda terrorists in Sudan during the 1990s.

Hezbollah is uniquely qualified to carry out terrorist attacks in the West. Such an attack would certainly not be unprecedented.

Hezbollah is believed to have carried out two bomb attacks in Argentina against the Israeli embassy in 1992 and at a Jewish Community Center in 1994. More than 120 innocent civilians were killed in those attacks. The attacks are also believed to have been carried out with Iranian support.

An example of suspicious Iranian activity in support of possible terrorist strikes occurred in New York back from 2002 to 2006 when members of the Iranian UN mission were repeatedly caught by the NYPD for conducting obvious reconnaissance of New York landmarks and subways.

We can be sure that, when and if Hezbollah or Iran decide to strike in the West, the targets were already selected and prepped by operatives in place long before the attack occurs.

Ben Evansky of Fox News has revealed that soon the Jihadist terrorist organization Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors will have their man installed at the United Nations Security Council in the form of Lebanon’s UN ambassador…